Simple Cooking: Moros y Cristianos

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Mar 1, 2010 5:00PM

The finished dish: a steaming serving of \<em\>moros y cristianos\<\/em\>.

The ingredients for the dish, set up \<em\>mise en place\<\/em\>.

Frying up the bacon until crispy. The grease will be used to make the \<em\>sofrito\<\/em\>.

The finished \<em\>softiro\<\/em\> of Spanish onion, red pepper, garlic, salt, pepper, tomato sauce, oregano and ground cumin.

All the ingredients for the dish, brought to a boil, 25 minutes from completion.

Beans and rice is a hearty, healthy meal common among a plethora of cultures. It also saves you some money if you're able to make it yourself. The past two weekends we've made lunch at the office more palatable with Cuban style black beans and rice, aka moros y cristianos. This dish can work as either a side to an entrée or as a meal in itself. If you wind up using canned black beans, you'll also save yourself the time of soaking and boiling the legumes.

The recipe we've used has been adapted from playwright Eduardo Machado's 2007 memoir Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile's Hunger For Home. In addition to the aforementioned soaking of black beans, we've also replaces green pepper with the sweeter red pepper and table salt for sea salt, since the bacon in the recipe will provide a fair amount of sodium on its own

Ingredients

3 thick slices slab bacon, sliced into 1-inch pieces
1 Spanish onion, peeled and diced ¼" thick
1 red pepper. stems and seeds removed, diced ¼" thick
4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1/4 cup tomato sauce
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh finely ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
2 cups medium grain rice
4 cups black beans, drained and rinsed thoroughly
4 cups drained black bean broth from the second soak and boil of the beans

1. Soak the beans overnight (6-8 hours). For a quick soak, cover the beans in 4 cups water and bring to a quick boil for two minutes. Remove from heat. Cover and let sit for one hour. Drain and rinse beans thoroughly. Cover with water again. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and let beans simmer for an hour, or until tender but not mushy. Drain the beans, rinse and set both them and boil aside.
2. Fry the bacon in a pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat until crispy, about 6 minutes (see Photo #3). Transfer to a plate using a slotted spoon.
3. Add the onion and red pepper to the pot and cook, stirring, until softened slightly, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, about 1 minute. Add the tomato sauce, salt, pepper, oregano and cumin. Stir and cook 1 minute more. (Photo #4)
4. Add the rice, beans, water and bacon to the pot. Bring to a boil (Photo #5). Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, until the rice is cooked through, the beans are soft and the flavors have blended, about 20-25 minutes. Fluff the rice with a fork, then stir gently to make sure the beans are evenly distributed (Photo #1). Serve, season with hot sauce to taste, if you wish. Or garnish with parsley.